In operations performed in the manufacturing or fabricating of face plates or viewing panels for color television picture tubes, it is expedient for obvious economic or cost-reduction reasons, as in other manufacturing operations today, to automate, to the extent possible, the steps required in said tube face plate or viewing panel manufacturing or fabricating operations. For example, there is shown in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 580,331, filed May 23, 1975 by Harris G. Rodgers, Sr. and entitled "Color Television Picture Tube Envelope", a picture tube envelope including a generally rectangular curved glass face plate having embedded, in each of the corner regions of the concave surface thereof, an end of a channel shaped pin for supporting an aperture mask adjacent such concave surface. Such aperture mask support pins may, for example, be of the type disclosed in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 629,646, now U.S. Pat. No. 3,988,631 filed Nov. 6, 1975 by Harris G. Rodgers, Sr. and entitled "Pin For Supporting the Aperture Mask In a Color Television Picture Tube".
In order that the above mentioned face plate or viewing panel manufacturing or fabricating operations may be performed as rapidly as possible and economic advantages thereby attained, a group of four pin insertion guns or mechanisms may, for example, be employed at a selected work station in an assembly line for simultaneous insertion, in each corner of each of a plurality, series or succession of panels being intermittently and sequentially moved along such assembly line, of an aperture mask support pin such as that mentioned. However, to expedite, to the extent possible, the movement of the panels through the selected pin insertion station in said assembly line, it is expedient that the support pins be supplied to said pin insertion guns or mechanisms relatively rapidly so that such guns or mechanisms stand reloaded in preparation for inserting a set of four pins in a succeeding panel or face plate moved into the pin insertion station as a preceding panel, in said succession thereof, is moved out of such station. It is, accordingly, an object of the present invention to provide a pin feeding mechanism for automatically and sequentially feeding each of a plurality of aperture mask support pins to a mechanism or gun for sequential insertion of each of the pins into the glass of face plates or viewing panels for color television picture tubes.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a pin feeding mechanism of the type mentioned and which operates relatively rapidly to sequentially feed the pins to a pin insertion gun or mechanism.
Other objects and characteristic features of the invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.